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ARE YOU LONESOME TONIGHT? (Running Wild)
128
ARE YOU LONESOME TONIGHT
Book Two
RUNNING WILD TRILOGY
Bobby Hutchinson
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Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by Bobby Hutchinson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems – except in the case of brief quotations in articles or reviews – without the permission in writing from its publisher, Bobby Hutchinson.
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Table Of Contents
ARE YOU LONESOME TONIGHT
Book Two
RUNNING WILD TRILOGY
Bobby Hutchinson
Copyright
RUNNING WILD, THE TRILOGY
Chapter
One
“India, baby doll, it's me, Tom. I’ve been trying to get you for an hour, but the line’s always busy.” The male voice was sulky and husky with thwarted passion.
“Tommy, honey, I was just lying here on the bed thinking about you. How are you, big guy?” Thank goodness it was one of her regulars. Maxine shoved her unruly hair out of the way so she could listen to the hands free headset and change baby Graham’s messy diaper while purring suggestive comments into the small mic.
She caught sight of herself reflected in the bathroom mirror and grinned at the witchlike image. She wasn’t wearing a scrap of makeup, she had a zit on her chin, her green cat’s eyes were puffy from lack of sleep, and she needed a haircut. She had on a pair of much-washed gray sweats and a pink T-shirt already stained from the apricots she’d fed Graham for breakfast, and contrary to her fantasies, the ten pounds she’d gained with Graham hadn’t evaporated overnight.
Man, she
really
needed a haircut. Her shaggy auburn mane, thick and impossibly curly, was now well past her shoulders, and any style it had ever had was long gone. She usually braided it, but this morning there hadn’t been time.
Graham was cutting a tooth. He’d been awake nearly every hour last night, needing a cuddle or a bottle or a diaper change. Aware that Edna was out in the living room working the night shift, Maxine had put James Taylor on the tape player at one point and danced the baby around the bedroom until he slept again.
A child wailing in the background when you were trying to do phone sex wasn’t easy to explain. Maxine—and Edna too—had often told callers the noise was an imaginary poodle named Candy.
Maxine yawned hugely, only half listening. The night had taken its toll. She had been a wreck when she groggily took over the business phone at seven a.m. so Edna could go home, and the calls had been steady ever since. She’d fed Graham his cereal and made a pot of coffee with the cordless device clamped to her head.
"I’m not wearing much of anything, darlin’,” she said in answer to the usual question. She giggled provocatively. “Just a lace negligee thingee and a teensy pair of black thongs, and they’re . . .” She lowered her husky voice to an intimate whisper as she described her imagined lingerie in detail.
She murmured provocatively into the receiver and tried to keep her wriggling ten-month-old son amused with goofy faces so he’d lie still long enough for her to get the fresh diaper secured and the snaps of his jumpsuit done up. It was a little like trying to contain mercury; Graham was good-natured when he wasn’t teething, but he was also determined, and he was getting stronger every day.
He was also trying to talk.
"Mummummum.” He gave up struggling for an instant, grinned up at her, and gabbled again, and she smiled at him, quickly covering the mouthpiece. But Tommy hadn’t heard a thing; he was far too busy telling her what he wanted to do to her. She rolled her eyes and silently mouthed every word he said; she’d heard it all so many times before. He was a faithful customer, but like most of the others, he definitely lacked imagination.
Maxine got the last snap fastened and hoisted Graham from the countertop to the floor, where he took off toward the living room and his toy box, using the funny sideways crab walk that was his version of crawling.
She watched him adoringly as she absent-mindedly groaned and panted into the telephone. "Oh, Tommy, I love it when you talk dirty; it makes me so hot. . ."
Damn, she was so glad she’d bought this portable headset she’d seen advertised on the Shopping Channel. Now her neck didn’t ache so much by nighttime. She needed to change her sweatpants for clean ones; these had gobs of farina stuck to them, as well as a streak on the leg of something she’d rather not identify.
“Bbbbmmmmmm.” Graham rolled a toy bus along the rug and grinned when she waggled her fingers at him.
She needed to launch another career before her son began to understand what she did for a living.
The call ended just then with the usual results. Maxine checked her watch: twenty-three minutes, not bad at all. She felt more than a little proud of how far she’d come with this phone sex thing. At first she’d had a hard time keeping a caller on the line at all. It was a technique she’d learned gradually, and at the beginning it had taken concentration. Now she could do it almost automatically.
Considering the other calls that morning, too, she’d done well, she concluded as she tidied the bathroom and gathered up the soiled laundry.
Even with the hefty amount the telephone company charged for the use of the 900 line they’d installed in her house, she'd be able to pay the rent and the utilities again this month and put a little into her savings.
Guys always wanted to know if telephone sex was as good for her as it was for them, and she could honestly assure them it was. For two months before Graham was born and during the ten months since, it had paid the bills and bought diapers and formula. It had even made it possible, and necessary, to hire an employee.
Edna Gimbel had been working for Maxine for only the last seven weeks, and it still seemed a miracle to be able to sleep through the night. . . when Graham cooperated, of course.
Yup, life was hectic, but it was also a triumph to know that she was self-supporting, Maxine mused as she hurried into the bedroom for fresh clothing.
She hastily tied her hair back with a stray shoelace and managed to get a load of laundry tossed into the washer and the stuff from the dryer half folded before the business phone rang again.
“Hi, this is Jerome.” The deep voice sounded shy, and Maxine felt sympathetic. Guys were often bashful at first.
“Hi, Jerome. I'm India McBride. It’s so nice to hear from you.” She automatically pitched her deep voice even lower as she poured herself a cup of coffee and added a spoonful of sugar. She needed the energy this morning.
“Where are you calling from, Jerome?”
"Florida. Where are you located, India?” Sometimes her callers identified their exact location, but mostly they just named a state or province. She didn’t care; it was the time they spent on the line that mattered. Every extra minute they stayed on was more money in her bank account.
"I live in Vancouver, Canada.”
They always wanted to know specifically where she lived, which was fine with her. They also wanted to know what she was doing. As always, she mixed a bit of truth with a lot of fiction.
“I’m lying on my bed right now, in the bedroom.” She glanced around at the beige living room walls that needed painting, the ugly brown rug that could use a shampoo. Outside her front window, her next-door neighbor was taking his mutt for a walk, and across the street the macho guy who had the pinup-pretty wife crouched over his motorcycle with a wrench, a cigarette clutched in the side of his mouth. The suburb where she lived was comfortable, mostly family-oriented, and definitely lower middle class.
"I have a condo overlooking the ocean. I can see the sailboats and freighters on the inlet this morning,” she improvised, wondering what it would feel like to ride on a motorcycle.
"I’ve never been to Vancouver.”
“You'll have to come up and see me sometime.” It was an old Mae West line, delivered with all that great lady's innuendo. Maxine loved Mae West, although hardly any of her customers recognized the quotes.
“Maybe I'll just do that. How old are you, India?”
“Twenty-four.” Plus four, but most men liked her to be younger.
Jerome apparently did. He made a noise that denoted approval and then said, “So what’s the weather like up there in Vancouver, India?”
"It’s not bad for April. It’s overcast this morning, but yesterday we got a bit of sun. I suppose you’re basking in ninety-degree temperatures?” Maxine had learned to allow the customer to initiate whatever he wanted from the call, and she was still surprised at how many times her callers never got around to sex at all. They talked about their golf game, or football, the stock market, the problems they were having with their wives or girlfriends. They often seemed satisfied just to have her listen.
Jerome wasn’t one of those, however.
“I’m lyin’ in the sun, all right, honey. Out on my deck.” His voice dropped two decibels and took on a certain tension. “With not a stitch on. And Jimbo is just standin’ up and salutin’ fer you, darlin’.”
Maxine manufactured a little shriek and a provocative giggle. "Oh, you wicked thing. You're getting me all excited. Tell me exactly what you look like, and Jimbo too. Don't leave out a single detail." She opened the fridge to check on the milk supply. The gallon jug was nearly empty. She was going to have to make a run to the supermarket before Graham’s naptime.
Jerome launched into a detailed description. It was amazing how many of her callers were six-feet-two and a hundred and ninety pounds, with full heads of thick, wavy hair. And virtually all of them were extraordinarily well equipped, which was amazing considering all the media attention lately on the diminishing size of the male penis.
As she wiped the counters off and quietly cleared the table, Maxine slowly and adroitly led Jerome through arousal to fulfillment, with plenty of time spent on fictitious details designed to titillate. Satisfied and euphoric, he promised to call again soon.
The call had lasted eighteen minutes. Not bad, but not good either. Now that she knew his style, she’d be able to slow Jerome down when he called again.
Maxine did mental arithmetic as she forcibly removed Graham from the bathroom. He’d recently discovered the toilet bowl, and his favorite activity was dropping toys in the water. He stiffened and screamed in outrage as she closed the door firmly behind them. It took several moments before she could distract him with the contents of the pots-and-pans cupboard in the kitchen.
When he was quiet again, sitting on the floor happily fitting plastic containers inside one another, Maxine stole a moment to admire him, and pride made her heart swell until it hardly seemed to fit inside her chest.
Her son was a picture-perfect baby, curly golden hair, fair skin, dark brown eyes. Though his eyes were a different color from hers, they were the same shape, triangular and tilted up at the outside corners. He had her thick lashes as well. Her eyes were her best feature, she’d always thought, and she was grateful her son had inherited them instead of her mouth, which she considered too wide for her face.
His mouth wasn’t. It was perfect, well shaped and quick to smile. His arms and legs were long, his small body perfectly proportioned. He was going to be tall. He hadn’t gotten that gene from her; she was barely five-seven. His tiny chin was already strong and determined, again like hers, which was a good characteristic only if you were male, she’d been told. Being stubborn wasn't admired in a woman’s character. Her father had drilled her on that one, not that it had done any good. Being stubborn was all that had gotten her through at times.
Graham’s ears were flat against his skull, he had six white teeth, he said mama and doggy and woof, and every day he seemed to learn another new and, to her, amazing accomplishment. She was so proud of him she thought her heart would explode sometimes.
She was also a stay-at-home mom, and not a day passed that she didn’t breathe a prayer of gratitude for being able to care for her baby herself and earn a living at the same time.
The business phone rang, and the part of her that was sexy, sultry, dangerous India McBride created a heated fantasy for a businessman in Colorado, while at the same time Maxine Bleckner, who considered herself a shaky six at best on the attractiveness scale, wrote milk, cereal, bread, and teething biscuits on a shopping list, wiped away a long string of dribble from Graham’s chin, and came up with new and resourceful ways to amuse her son and keep him relatively quiet while she yakked on the phone.
Harry Watson had also devised ingenious games to amuse his three-year-old daughter, Sadie, while he talked to editors or did interviews on the telephone, but he’d used up every single one this morning. They’d reached the last resort, which was "Here’s Daddy’s Watch.” Sadie was alternately holding it to her ear and vigorously banging it on the floor as Oscar Sullivan droned on and on.
It was only a Timex, but Harry was fond of it, and he winced each time it hit the wooden floor of his bedroom-cum-study. He could only hope that Timex was as good as it’s advertising claimed.
Sullivan was an all-right guy, but he had a talent for taking the long way around any subject. He’d bought a number of Harry’s articles over the past several years. He edited with a light hand and paid promptly, which made Harry a fan as well as a friend; they’d spent a boozy weekend fishing at a mountain lake the previous summer, while Sadie was visiting her maternal grandmother in Seattle.
The worst part of business dealings with Oscar was the time it took. There was real danger of dying from old age by the time he got through whatever it was he'd called to say. Harry knew Sullivan had grown up in Saskatchewan on a farm, but he could well have come from Alabama, judging from his torturously slow and circuitous speech patterns.
"... thought of it when I heard a couple young copyeditors talking about the phone sex trade," Sullivan was finally saying, after a prolonged discussion about the stock market (Harry had no money to invest), Sullivan’s golf game (Harry hadn’t golfed since before Sadie was born), and which politician would win the upcoming election, a subject Harry could actually discuss knowledgeably because he'd just ghostwritten speeches for two of the leading opposing candidates.
"This phone sex thing is big, Harry. The Star has more ads for it than we ever had before, and that must mean that somebody’s makin’ money doin’ it, wouldn’t ya say? And the fact that it’s safe sex probably adds to its appeal, although I’m still a fan of the old-fashioned kind, dangerous or not.” He gave his gurgling laugh, which inevitably ended in a coughing fit, wasting still more time. If he didn’t stop smoking soon, Harry thought, Oscar wouldn’t be having sex much longer—or anything else, either.
Because Oscar was the editor of the Star, Vancouver’s most popular morning tabloid, Harry had managed so far to keep himself from snarling into the receiver, “Would you, for God’s sake, just spit out what you want, Sullivan?”
Restraining his mouth was both a smart career move and a supreme effort to honor the vow he’d made this week that he would never again swear in front of Sadie.
His little redheaded angel had called her elderly baby-sitter, Mrs. Campanato, a muffin two days before, which would have been sweet if she hadn’t preceded it with a four-letter sexual expletive she’d heard Harry use when he smashed his finger in the car door. Harry had apologized profusely to the horrified lady, who’d given him a stern but passionate lecture about foul language and innocent little motherless girls and middle-aged men who ought to know better.
Harry, thirty-six for another four months, didn’t think he quite qualified as middle-aged, but God forbid he’d ever argue with Maria Campanato.
He was contrite, but he was also secretly a little proud of his daughter. It was ingenious of Sadie to put the two words together, but Harry, of course, didn’t say that to Mrs. Campanato, and he’d spent a long, frustrating time trying to explain to Sadie why one word was okay to use and the other wasn’t. She hadn’t bought his reasoning, either. In fact, she was gleefully using the F-word right now to punctuate the destruction of his watch.
Harry smacked his palm on the desk to get her attention, which sent cold coffee splashing all over the notes he’d made for the article that was due on smoking for the Vancouver Health Unit. He scowled ferociously at Sadie and shook his head no, but the kid knew when she had him. She gave him a sweet, coy grin and went right on banging and cursing.
"See, Harry, I wanna go at this phone sex thing from a human interest angle, a firsthand encounter, that kind of approach.”
Harry figured sex of any sort was definitely interesting to humans, but Sullivan was finally on a roll, and there wasn’t any point in interrupting. If he did, he’d be here with his ear glued to the phone for the rest of the day.
"Does this sound like a thing you’d want to explore, Harry?”
Harry assured Sullivan it was. He was interested in exploring any damn thing this side of the law that would bring in a few extra bucks.
"Good. Excellent. Now, I’ll tell you how I want to go about this. I want you to find somebody local who’s in the business, an’ I want you to do me an expose with lots of human interest, plenty of detail. Readers are gonna want detail about this here subject, you understand, Harry. And I want it from the customer’s POV, like it was actually happening. I don’t want an interview with some little gal who’ll give you a shined-up version of what really goes on in this business. I want it to be authentic; I don’t want her to know you’re doing a story on her. Get as up-close and personal as you can. Readers are gonna wanna know what makes these sorta women tick, if you get my meaning.”
Harry thought so. "You want me to be more than just a onetime telephone customer. You want me to develop a personal relationship with the lady?”
"Within reason, Harry. I don’t want you to get us sued for slander, or compromise your honor. Or your body, neither, old buddy.” Sullivan gurgled and coughed, and Harry waited.
"But yeah, I want you to get to know her away from the job, if you can. I, for one, would like to know just what these women really look like, and if I’m curious, you can bet our readers will be too.”
Harry frowned, considering. "That might be tough, Oscar. I’m pretty sure they don't make a habit of meeting their customers face-to-face. It could be dangerous for them, for one thing.”
"You’re a persuasive guy, Harry. Talk your way in.”
Harry broached the other reservation he had about the assignment. "These services charge by the minute, don’t they?”
He had no experience with telephone sex. He preferred the real thing, although lately he’d have taken whatever was offered, in any form available. He’d been celibate, much against his will, for longer than he cared to recall. The combined demands of single parenthood and the stress of earning a living as a writer for hire had practically turned him into a monk. Well, not quite. But closer than he’d ever wanted to come.
“This is going to take time, Oscar, to build up a relationship, get a woman to tell me details about herself and her business, maybe get her to trust me enough to meet me. At God knows what per minute, expenses could get pretty steep.”
There was a prolonged and pained silence on the other end, and Harry grinned. The sure way to put a crimp in Sullivan’s tongue was to mention expense money. The Star paid well, but Oscar had a thing about keeping expense accounts down.
“Daddy, I gotta go potty.” Sadie’s voice was loud and urgent, and Harry hastily covered the mouthpiece.
“Can you go by yourself, tiger?"
“Unh-unh. I gotta go poo. I need you, Daddy.”
Sullivan was back, sounding reluctant. “I’ll advance you something to cover phone expenses, but don’t go hog-wild on me here, buddy. You gotta consider this’ll likely be more pleasure than actual work, right? You’ll be gettin’ paid to have a good time, if you see what I mean?" He laughed. "Maybe we could split expenses on this one?”
Bull. Work was work. Writing was hard work, sex or no sex. Harry trailed down the hall after Sadie and tamped down his irritation. “A writer's gotta stay detached if the story's gonna be any good, Oscar; you know that. And in order to do a good job, I’ve gotta put in the time.” He tried to sound reasonable, but his impatience came across anyway.
“Daddy, I can't get these off.” Sadie sounded frantic, and Harry tugged at her striped tights, but it was a two-handed job. Why were little girls’ tights so damned tight? Why was Sadie such a nutcase about what she wore? She’d had these red-and-blue horizontally striped circus things on for three days now, and even by his relaxed standards, they needed to go in the laundry.
"How about I call you back on this, Oscar?”
“Can’t be done. See, I’m goin’ down to San Diego on a two-week golfing holiday, leavin’ today. I want this in the bag before I walk out of here. Let's see, I guess we’ll agree to reimburse you.” He named a figure that in Harry’s estimation was low, but still more than he’d expected Sullivan to cough up.
“Just see you don’t go getting addicted to this phone sex stuff, okay, Harry?” Sullivan laughed again as Harry finally managed to get the tights unglued and peeled down.
“Sure, Oscar. And what about the finished piece? How much?"
Again, Sullivan surprised him by naming a figure that was well above what Harry had expected. The editor was obviously thinking of this as a lead story, maybe even a cover item, which might give Harry a little bargaining power. He thought of the negative balance in his checking account, mentally crossed his fingers, and talked fast.
“How about I do some research during the next couple weeks, write you out a general outline of what I figure the story could be, and if it's all that you expected, you pay me half the article fee at that point?”
There was a longer silence than before, and then Sullivan sighed. “You know that ain’t the way it goes, but okay, Harry. What the hell, I know you'll do a decent job."
Harry’s spirits soared as he hung up and reached out to plop his daughter on the throne. She scowled at him and pointed an imperious finger at the door. “Go ’way, Daddy. I can do it my own self.”
He grinned and shook his head at her contrariness. “Okay, button. Call me when you’re done.”
The bathroom was off the kitchen, and he went over to the coffeemaker and poured himself a fresh cup while he waited for Sadie’s summons. He sipped and absently scratched his face, which was itchy because he hadn’t shaved in three days.